It's about time to breath some new life into this thread again. And give me an opportunity to geek out.

So, I just returned from the cinema, having watched X-men: First Class, the new prequel to the X-men movie-series. When I first heard about this project, I was very, VERY skeptic. Twice before this I had been majorly dissapointed, with the mediocre and sometimes terrible X-men 3 and the facepalmingly stupid and annoyingly terrible X-men Origins: Wolverine. (Both whom I really wanted to like, but just couldn't.) But when it was announced that Kick-Ass-director Matthew Vaughn would direct, my mood turned too careful optimism. X-men are probably my favourite superhero-franchise, so I really wanted this movie to be good, especially after the previous 2 failures.

And you know what? It is good. It's really good actually, and you should run to your nearest cinema as fast as you can to see it. But if you want to hear something more detailed, then please read on. I'll warn you when spoilers are coming.

So, first of, the story. As previously mentioned, this movie is a prequel, set in 1962 just before the Cuban Missile Crisis. While mutants have started to pop up, they have yet to be discovered by humanity. We meet a young Charles Xavier, who has just become a Professor and spends his days trying out his telepatic abilities and picking up hot universitystudents, and a young Erik Lehnsherr, who spends his days traveling the world and hunting down nazis who escaped into hiding after WW2. These two meet when Charles is requested by CIA-agent Moira MacTaggert to assist her in the hunt for Sebastian Shaw, the leader of The Hellfire Club and a mutant with not so nice plans for humanity. Shaw also happens to be the next man on Erik's list, and soon they team up to stop Shaw. And to do this they also recruit a teams worth of young mutants, whom they traine to fight Shaw's own mutant henchmen.

That's the story in a nutshell, but there is much more to it than that. There are major themes in this movie (which are all par for the course in anything good X-men related), like fear of the unkown or those who are different , fear of being/looking different, accepting who you are, and how conflicting ideologies can tear people apart. This all comes out through the relationship between Charles and Erik, whom become best friends, but whos views on human and mutant relations are simply too different. This all works thanks to the brilliant acting of both James McAvoy as Charles and especially Michael Fassbender as Erik. Charles is an idealist and a good man, but due to his priviliged upbringing has never really expereinced the hardships that Erik has. Erik on the other hand, knows just all to well how cruel and ugly humanity can be, and cannot belive that humaity could ever treat mutants as anything other than monsters. But he is by no means a villian in this movie. In fact, he proves time and time again that he can be truly heroic, and we see how he and Charles become good friends.

Other actors that really need to be mentioned are Jennifer Lawrence as Raven/Mystique, Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast and Kevin Bacon as Shaw. Lawrence does a wonderful Mystique, and really shows both her concerns with how different she is, and how she comes to terms with this and her pride as a mutant. (Pluss, she looks amazing covered in blue paint. ) Her relationship with Charles is also great, and really shows that while he is a good person, he really dosen't know how it feels to be and look different as different as she does. Her relationship with Beast is also good, as he has the same problems as her, but has an even harder time accepting it. And Bacon as Shaw is simply a wonderful badguy. He is carismatic and cool, but also evil as all hell. He's the kind of badguy you love to hate, or hate to love.The rest of the cast also do a good job, with special mention to Jason Flemyng as Azazel, who is simply cool as hell. Too bad he dosen't do much.

And that brings me to the negative part of my review. My big problem with this movie is that several characters feel underused. While characters like Havoc, Banshee and the previously mentioned Azazel are all cool and interesting, they really don't get much time to do much or develop. This is a reccuring problem in the X-men movies, seeing how each movie needs at least a teams worth of characters, plus badguys. And while January Jones certainly looks the part as Emma Frost/The White Queen, and while we sometimes see glimpses of the feme fatal and ice queen from the comics, she too feels underused and flatt. It's just that in the later years she's become a much more interesting and developed character in the comics and I wish they had used those aspects of her more, instead of going the generic, hot henchwoman-route. One of Shaws henchmen dosen't get any lines AT ALL. There really isn't enough time to develop them all all that much.

This results in a scene and a character that feel completely pointless imo. SPOILERS!!! One of the recruits that Charles and Erik pic up is Darwin, who has the mutant power to develop whatever he needs to survive a given situation. He gets his head under water, he grows gills. You try to hit him with a steel pipe, he gets a hard shell to protect him. In one scene, Shaw and his henchmen kick down the door to the X-men's current HQ, kills a bunch of CIA agents, and give the mutant kids the chance to join him. Angel, a girl with fly-wings and acidic spitt, chooses to join him. (which I guess should make us upset, but she has only had like 2 scenes, so this betrayl dosen't really shock us, as we don't know much about her. Again, not much time for development.) This results in Darwin also pretending to join. But he grabs Angel and shields her while Havok throws an energyblast at Shaw & co. But Shaws power to absorb energy stops the attack, he grabs Darwin and forces the energy down his throat. This kills him and Shaw & co leave. First. Why is Darwin so concerend with Angel leaving? They've only had 2 scenes together. Second. Why dosen't Darwins power save him? It isn't really established what he can and can't survive, so this is again a result of little time to develop secondary characters. And Third. They don't do anything with it. Darwin isn't mentioned again at all. Not that I expect the rest of the characters to cry buckets over a guy they've know for 2-3 scenes (that would be just as silly), but they still saw a person die in front of them. This should lead to some reaction, fear, doubts about joining the X-men, or anything. Especially with Havoc, as it's been established earlier in the movie that he has trouble controling his power and fears hurting people around him, and that it's partially his fault that Darwin dies. But if this gives him any sort of reaction, we certainly don't see much of it. This makes both Darwin and his death both feel pointless. It's like they thought "Hey, I don't know what to do about this Darwin-character. He and his powers could end up becomming a walking Deus Ex Machina and ruin the thrillby making everything too easy.""We could kill him to make some drama?""Yeah, good idea!" Pluss, he and Angel are the only non-white recruts. She turnes evil and he dies. I know the movie is set in the 60's, but it was made in the 2000's people. I thought we had gotten past stuff like that. It just annoys me that an otherwise great film makes such a basic mistake.

Also, I feel that storyelements became rushed towards the end. We all know that Magneto turnes evil and that Mystique joines him, but when it happens at the end of the movie, I feel that they should have waited with it for a sequel. If we are to belive the previous movies, Charles and Erik where friends for years before Erik turned and became Magneto. This also contradicts flashbacks in X3, where they where together (and Charles was still walking) when they found Jean Grey. (Though if this movie retcones X3 that would be fine by me. ) It just feels rushed, same with Mystique. While she does seem conflicted in the end and leaves because Charles says it's ok, it feels really rushed after all the carefull buildup in the rest of the movie. And her relationship with Beast is never really resolved, and neither is his personal conflict about hes new mutation. He's somewhat grumpy, but then seems fine. Hopefully, these problems will be adressed in the sequel (if it is made). After all, no-one (other than Magneto vs humanity) seem like mortal enemies yet at the end, so maybe these conflicts will return and get more developed.END SPOILERS!!!

But back to the good. The camerawork is great, with the appropriate shots taken in every scene, and the cinematography in general is solid. The effects look excelent, and are a step up from the sometimes embarrasingly bad CG in X3 and Wolverine. I also love the old-school makeup on Mystique, Azazel and Beast (in the later scenes). The music is also good and sets the mood, but there weren't any tracks that I really remember.

So, all in all. Great story, great acting, lots of laughs (watch out for some great in-jokes and easter eggs) and action. And it brings my favorite super-team back to the big screen in all it's glory. Not perfect by any means, with some annoying flaws, but still a damn good time at the cinema. 8+/10!

(Btw, sorry for this wall of text. I just had to get it all out. )

(If anyone know about a site with good avatars and/or sigs of Hellsing, Drifters, Battle Angel Alita, Black Lagoon or Witchblade, then please tell me.)

The last movie I saw on the theaters was Conan... yes Conan. And it was... bad... gloriously bad, it seems the main instruction for the guy in charge of the visual effects was "If the scene is dull, put more fire on it!". The effect falter many, many times; there are scene wich the use of a blue screen is obvious, another were you can be sure the rocks were made of stirofoam and so on.The story... is barely there XD

Still... I had a great time... there is blood and guts by the bucket and the movie is so bad that is quite entertaining. But only if you get at least 3 people to go with you and you all go willing to laugh at point at the movie XD

My conclusion is... is like the Scorpion king except with more blood and actual tits. No wishy-washyness here.

Watched Lesson of the Evil very recently in videos. This is a horror slasher movie. I must say I was surprised by how good this movie is. The gore and black humor level of this movie matches those of Quentin Tarantino. I think everyone who isn't bothered by Hellsing-level of gore and violence should try and watch this movie once, you might just get hooked by the main character.

The story is starts with a short scene of a psychopath kid trying to murder his own parents for finding out that he killed his teachers. This scene gives you a looming eerie and is so memorable it will stick in your memory, despite how the next scene immediately jump to a completely unrelated story about the perfect English teacher, Hasumi, liked by his students and colleagues. Right when you starts to relax and forget the first murder scene, the perfection of this Hasumi character starts to slowly fall off and you will be reminded (again and again throughout the movie) of the psychopath that this character actually is.

Although the main character, Hasumi, presents itself as a sort of intelligent and manipulative, almost Hannibal Lecter-like, in the first half of the movie where he always succeeded in covering his own killing tracks and kept his social status in good standing, everything simply falls over in the second half, once the main character decided there is no other way to cover his tracks but to simply kill everyone. If this sounds like a spoiler, trust me, it's not. The movie poster already give this out with the tag line of "He kills them (the students) like he crossed their names out". The actor who plays Hasumi played him with such an outstanding level of acting, that even though you already know all of this beforehand, and even though the story started with him murdering his own parents, it all does not matter. You will still believe the "Good Hasumi" act from the first part of the movie, and you will feel the shock and disbelief once the movie entered its final arc on the second half of the movie.

The first and second part of the movie is so different you almost feel like you're watching two different movie. The second part is just so absurd you can do nothing but to laugh at every black humor the character throws at you at every turn (wearing rain jacket during his killing spree, etc). The director made an epic actor pick for the character, there can be no one better to play this Hasumi character, and I really like how he hides all the murder scene in the first part and slowly showing it as the character unfolds, and ended the movie with a complete diarrhea of murder scenes as if to make up for the lack of murder scenes in the first half of the movie.

My only complaint is probably the flashback scenes. Sometimes the flashback scenes are integrated with the killing scene, and it's impossible to distinguish between the timeline, whether the movie is talking about his past or the current time. This may cause some confusion until you noticed it's actually a flashback scene.

Highly recommended if you like Django Unchained as it have about the same ironic mix of humor and gore.

Did you see "What We Do in the Shadows"?? It`s really awesome!! It was advised me by my friends who are not addicted to vampires, Hellsing and Dracula, so you get a lot of humor and fun, even if you do not know the subtleties! (There is Vladucard!)

YOU NEED TO SEE IT!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, so and need to comment it here.If you know another awesome funny or not movies about vampires or Vlad Dracula please write about it here.

Just went and saw the Hollywood version of Ghost in the Shell.In the end I liked it. I was suprised how faithful it was, not only to the first feature film, but also the second, TV series and of course the original manga.

In someways I felt it was too faithful and some of the homages were a bit forced. But luckily they put enough of an effort to create something that fitted in along the originals, giving it a ghost of its own.

"Not even a million enemies where able to make Rome afraid! Yet Rome trembled whenever she heard the name of Hannibal!!" - Scipio Africanus

I've seen Ghost in the Shell a few days ago and I agree, it is very true to the original story, the only thing they changed is the ending. I'm sad it is flopping, like pretty much all of good adaptation that I liked, Constantine, Silent Hill and very recently Warcraft. They are all good and true to the source material and they are all flopped

For the past days I've been trying to put into words how awesome Shin Godzilla was.In my humble opinion it was nothing less of amazing, but I can definitely understand if its not everyone's best Gojira, depending on which Godzilla you prefer.

First of all, rather than being about Godzilla, its all about the humans trying to come together to fight Godzilla. The only monster in this film is Godzilla. So no King Ghidorah, Mothra or whatever monster Godzilla had to fight in many of his films.Instead Shin Godzilla goes back to the roots, to a time when Godzilla was a genuine threat based on the horrors of nuclear weapons.

But now they've updated it to present day. Instead of nuclear attacks of WW2 and the Bikini Atoll incident, it is now based on the Fukushima disaster and the lack of action to it.The film we get is a realistic drama in between the government officials, and people involved trying to take action in a modern day bureaucracy. This leads to a lot of talk in the movie, especially at the beginning. But when you realize why its there, it becomes a very dark satire reflecting upon how most modern democracies would try but fail to cope with unforeseeable threats.

The film does deliver when it comes to action, even if it takes a while for it to get going. But when it does you're really invested in the characters in their united struggle against a force of nature.So do give it a try. There is a lot to it that makes it more than "just" a monster movie. Its a monster movie with a message just as horrifying as the monster they're trying to fight.

"Not even a million enemies where able to make Rome afraid! Yet Rome trembled whenever she heard the name of Hannibal!!" - Scipio Africanus